Opinion: Don’t Be a Knee-Jerk, Research the Facts

A few months ago, my Twitter and Facebook streams bustled with chat about a blog post titled “The Shocking Ingredients in Beer,” written by a self-described “Food Babe.” The Babe told her readers that based on a year-long investigation on her part, she’d discovered that mainstream beers contain dangerous, often mysterious, ingredients—beaver anal glands! GMOs! Corn syrup! GMO corn syrup! Bottom line, she reported: Avoid beer (or any alcohol) and especially mainstream beer. If you must drink, she told readers, stick to organic, gluten-free, and local brews. “With cheap beer—you are not just getting a cheap buzz, you are getting the worst of the worst.”

Curious, I hied myself over to the Babe’s website, where I learned that she was a marketing consultant and entrepreneur. For $17.99 a month (or $119.88 a year), I could buy her monthly eating guide, complete with shopping list and recipes. (“Want to lose weight, feel great, and get healthy from the inside out?”)

Maureen Ogle

But once past glossy ads for her own products and those she promoted, as well as detailed lists of her media mentions and television appearances, it was obvious that The Babe was a modern-day version of a 19th-century snake oil salesperson. She peddles food and nutrition nonsense but her real product is fear: She feeds readers just enough to scare the bejesus out of them—GMOs, MSG, and beaver anal glands!!!—and then offers her own wisdom as a beacon to guide them to safety. (As a Twitter friend pointed out, she’s likely aiming for guest spots on, say, Dr. Oz’s show, another romp into the factual Twilight Zone. My guess is that she’d like to bounce Doc Oz and take over his show.)

As for the Babe’s facts, well, I’m neither a brewer nor a scientist, but even I knew that those were nonsense. Bare minimum, one fact tripped my internal alarm: As evidence of beer’s dangers, she cited information from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CPSI). Because I’d written a history of beer in America, I knew that the CSPI has a decades-long policy of condemning alcohol and lobbying for neo-prohibitionist legislation. As a source of information, the organization is untrustworthy, unreliable, and demonstrates a chronic disregard for science (weird, given the group’s name).

Seven years ago, I would have rolled my eyes and moved on. Heck, seven years ago, I might have believed The Babe. But not these days. That’s because I’ve spent those seven years researching and writing a history of meat in America. As part of that project, I’ve followed an ongoing “food debate” here in the United States. This isn’t the place for a detailed discussion of that debate, but briefly: Critics argue that Big Ag has driven family farmers off the land and replaced diversified agriculture with a monoculture devoted to (GMO) corn and soybeans. Big Ag is handmaid to Big Food, which manufactures foods from GMO-tainted crops, corn syrup, and other seemingly toxic ingredients.

On the other side, farmers and food makers argue that large-scale agriculture, including the use of GMOs, and “factory” food production are necessary in order to feed huge populations and keep consumer prices low. Frankly, the “debate” is more shouting match than even-handed exchange of views. Advocates on both sides spew mis-information and bad science in order to score points with consumers and would-be donors.

But after seven years of following that debate, I know this is true: noisy, self-interested confrontations like it are counter-productive and dangerous. When advocates misuse science and fact in order to score points, we all lose. That’s especially true now, when when any fool with an idea can and does use the interwebs to promote misinformation and generate paranoia and fear, and then tout him or herself as the expert who will lead the frightened to safety.

The Food Babe, for example, is extracting profit from that swamp of misinformation. She feeds her readers a mishmash of bad science and half-truths, and then offers her wisdom as the beacon that will guide them to safety. That she’s peddling nonsense is irrelevant. She’s found profitable, low-hanging fruit and she’s reaping its rewards.

So what?, you say. Ignore her.

And I would have except for this: Many people in the beer community retweeted, shared, and linked to the Babe’s blog post as if her “investigation” merited attention and her facts were accurate. Worse, many of those busy retweeting and sharing hadn’t bothered to read, let alone question, what The Babe had written. Rather, their reaction was knee-jerk pure and simple: We know GMOs and corn syrup are bad, and an expert—The Babe—has learned that some beers contain GMOs and corn syrup, and the beers in question are those mainstream bad beers, and score another point for craft beer and, hey! I’d better warn my friends. (To their credit, many of my online friends deleted their shares once they were tipped off to the facts.)

But I was bothered more by something more dangerous than knee-jerk-driven tweets. For seven years, I’ve watched for-profit and non-profit organizations and corporations use precisely that kind of misinformation to attract supporters and raise funds. It required no stretch of an imagination on my part to envision a purity war erupting in the brewing industry, with some brewers latching on to the Babe’s nonsense to one-up the competition and score points with consumers. “Our beer is 100% GMO free.” “We don’t use fish bladders or beaver anal glands.” “Our brewery is a corn-syrup-free zone.” As far as I was concerned, nothing good would come of allowing The Babe’s self-interested mischief to spread, virus-like, among the growing audience for good beer.

That’s why, just a few hours after reading her post, I reached out to beermakers, professional and homebrewer alike, and asked them to help set the record straight. Over the next few weeks, we put together a comprehensive point-by-point response to The Babe’s nonsense. I posted it at my site, where it’s had some 20,000 reads—probably not as many as the few million Babe’s original post probably enjoyed, but better than nothing.

So to you, dear readers, I reiterate that well-worn cliche (with a reminder that every cliche rests on a core of truth): Don’t believe everything you read on the interwebs. Practice responsible digital citizenship. Take the time to find facts. (And it can be time-consuming; you may have to go past the first page of Google results.)

The stakes are high. The brewing industry is reaching record numbers of consumers and the last thing last thing that brewers need is for those new good-beer converts to encounter a purity war and a morass of misinformation.

Maureen Ogle is a historian and the author of Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer.

But GMOs are indeed bad, yet you appear to promote them. European crops do not allow GMOs, yet in the USA this is OK. Foods have eto be marked ORGANIC and farms have to pay for this privilege, yet food that is modified genetically doesn’t need any labels at all? How does this make sense?

GMOs are bad? Tell that to the billions of lives saved in India, google “Green Revolution.” Do you have any evidence of why they are bad? Do you work in the field? Or do you just think they sound bad and that is enough?

“That’s ridiculous. This shouldn’t even be a debate. Even if you could use all the organic material that you have–the animal manures, the human waste, the plant residues–and get them back on the soil, you couldn’t feed more than 4 billion people. In addition, if all agriculture were organic, you would have to increase cropland area dramatically, spreading out into marginal areas and cutting down millions of acres of forests.”

Easy to be critical when sitting at home well fed and sipping on your premium organic tea. Get educated.

You do know that the European Union always have the type of knee-jerk reaction as illustrated in this article right? that is teh case in their ‘ban’ on GMO products. An uneducated politician so swayed by “woo” claims about GMO went about to ‘ban” GMO’s wihout any argument to the contrary to be allowed.

First, full disclosure, I’m a former natural foods worker and believe in a lot of what the movement stands for. I’m also a home brewer and confessed beer snob. That said, I’m really appalled by the tenancy to use misinformation as a weapon, or, worse still, a marketing tool. I don’t care if it comes from Cargill or Bob’s Red Mill, if you have to lie about your project or your competitor’s product to sell it, maybe it ain’t worth selling.

All you have to do is look at the company Carill. They supply a vast amount of barley to the brewing industry. From the farmer to the grain elevator to Cargill is a commodity operation. The likelihood of Monsanto being in that supply chain is very high. Cargill is the largest privately held company in the world and would be the 9th largest company on the Dow if it were public. They are larger than InBev and MC combined by around 4x from a revenue standpoint.

Was the food babe wrong? 100%

Is the craft beer community doing the same thing? Yes. It doesn’t get more “local” than that does it?

It seems that in the current world, those whom espouse themselves as so called environmentalists and (food experts) spew their half truths and manage to hoodwink enough nonthinkers into believing their tripe. I know of no one that does not want clean water and pure food. Problem is, the reality about gmo’s is that most of the negative research is based on self serving data some of which has no basis of fact. And, what facts that may exist are not so much supportive of the negatives but more to inconclusive results. I’m certainly not supportive of mega farming and big ag and big food producers, but I have seen first hand many small farms fail, not because they were forced out of business, but because of a long list of reasons. Many farms cease to exist due to death, retirement, and in many many situations of farmers selling there farms to land developers. Those selling sometimes walk away with much more money than could be made farming. And corn syrup being the demon substance is still being spewed by those whom base their facts on unsubstantiated data designed for the outcome. Butt I digress. Your so called food expert is like so many other (experts). If you tell a lie to enough people, it somehow becomes fact. I really dispise these self appointed saviors of the modern world. Reality is that they make the circumstance worse with their half truths. True facts are pushed aside for information that could do more harm than good. Your article was quite to the point and insightfully neutral. Reality and truth may hurt, but is still the truth.

Just to follow up on a few points in your piece along with some observations of other comments.

You need go no further to find an example of GMO Misinformation than the case of the fight over banning of any GMO crop from Hawaii Look it up. It’s a perfect example of why the shrill outcry against GMO plants is packed with misinformation and disregard for real science.

Where you will find a considerable agreement of the general public against large agriculture developers and chemical companies, there is a place in society for them. Reining in their activities would seem to be appropriate. But, simply banning their science without using good science is nonsense.

What does any of this have to do with beer!? Plenty! Engineered crops are everywhere. So finding them in beer is inevitable. Saying that all GMO’s are bad is no different than taking the side of Prohibitionist! Ban all alcoholic beverages! They are all bad! Such a concept is, again, nonsense!

Some would say that making beer is an exact science! Nothing could be farther from the truth! Tell that to the first guy that put chipotle peppers in a batch of beer. Banning anything just because there you have an argument against it is not based in common sense. It certainly is not based in science!

And just a final word on the disappearing family farm! Blame that on a generation of offspring whom want a better life than working 12 to 18 hours 6 or 7 days a week for a disappointing profit! Even the big farm businesses started out small. Very few survive to become large. Those that do worked to find a better way to do it. Yes there are abusers! Yes there are polluters. But punish them, not all of them. We can’t all grow tomatoes in the back yard and hardly anyone could grow a pineapple. Use some real intelligence! Don’t listen to those whom push juk science and misinformation!

I am a brewery owner, professional brewer, and craft beer enthusiast. I know what is going into our beer, and it never gave me a comfortable feeling when I added the chemicals to the kettle, fermenter and filter while working for other breweries. Several weeks before opening my own brewery, the chemical salesman came knocking at my door to sell me things to boost my yield. “No thanks.”
This is not an issue of GMO’s, but a matter of disclosure and integrity. I use the same malt, hops, water, and yeast as everyone else, and I DISCLOSE EVERYTHING ON MY LABEL. If we expect to know what is in our food, then why don’t we know what is in our craft beer? I sell my beer at the same price point as the guy accelerating his beer with chemicals and artificial ingredients. But he is making his beer faster and cheaper, while not disclosing all the extra junk that he uses.
If there is nothing to hide, then why can’t I find an ingredient (and process agent!!!) list on my bottle or can?
My email address is attached. Let’s talk. I’ll introduce you to my friends who work at several other of these craft beer factories who will also verify what I am saying.

Eric,
Hey man, I am super excited to read your comments to this article. I’m a little late to the party, so to speak, but I am writing a series of articles for the Montana Organic Association specifically about brewing and I would love to visit with you. Unfortunately I’m trying to meet a deadline of tomorrow (Jan 12) to summit my initial draft, but please call or email me asap if you would like to have some audience to your brewing convictions.You are not alone… -John[email protected].
406.879.9301

If the Food Babe is HEADLINE GRABBING alarmist as touted by MAUREEN OGLE then Maureen is the QUEEN of The HIGHEST form of IGNORANCE is when you reject something you know nothing about…

The Food Babe would be pounced on with mega lawsuits if what she is asking the beer companies to reveal is false. Sometimes the truth is in the middle or not at all. Do you have a right to know what you’re ingesting?

Um i’d just like to point out most of you should actually go and research what this article is saying you’ll find several articles worded 50% the same also supposedly by the same person whose “Writing a history of meat article/book” also bashing the cpsi in the exact same way.. Either this is some right wing bullshit or people just have no creativity and just repost anything they see and call it their own. who knows… i certainly don’t. But i urge you to look more into this rather than take someones side because they claim what the other person is wrong and they have “no scientific” when you truely provide no real science either and just quote uncited words.. You’re just as bad as “Food babe” for continuing to post such blogs and articles… but hey that’s my two cents..

Whether or not you approve of GMO’s, carcinogenic additives, and corn syrup in your beer, honest food labeling is a good thing. Beer companies should have to comply with the law to list ingredients in their beers just like other food and beverage companies must list ingredients in this country. Why should they get a free pass?

If you believe that the contents in food are not harmful, well keep it to yourself. But it is irresponsible to discredit someone or the cause because like it or not, what American food contains is harmful. My brother now has ulcerative colitis because of what he used to eat. Ulcerative Colitis is incurable. But he has controlled it without any medicine by only eating NON GMO and organic. The Food Babe is not the only source for information like that, there is free information out there. She is not selling her own food, but the way she eats. And A LOT of people do that. Maybe you should mind your own business.

Congratulations! You are alive, being alive has the inherent and eventual outcome of death. There is an inherent risk to everything you do everyday. Driving your car to work, drinking beer(not together obviously), etc … We all make our decisions to do as we do. IF you make the choice to drink beer with these known substances, so be it. however, you should be given the opportunity to know what is in it and what the potential outcome is based on fact not opinion. One has to be savvy to extract the fact from BS in posts and make decisions for themselves. I happen to drink plenty of beer, having this information now is nice. I was blissfully unaware prior reading the posts. Is that going to change my choices? Potentially, it just depends on what I learn after I understand the process and if the original “Babe” post is relevant or not. My point is, pointing the finger one direction or another without any real understanding is sadly comical. Much like the argument ages ago of the earth was flat and the person saying it was round. It is all speculation until evidence is present.

Sorry u r wrong and wright . I have a friend that works for Roche , there I said it and he’s a chemist also . Well , he proved me wrong . I didn’t want to believe to food Babe but guess what , for some reasone food babe doesn’t know but her article is on the money . There u have . I don’t like to conflict on anything but when you have resources say other wise .